Guild Wars 2

nexxe.7081:

This game desperately needs a public test server. WoW and Swtor have one, and other games as well, but it doesn’t really help in some of them because of the way they are set up.. If set up properly, it can request feedback forms in-game, with specific questions and surveys, gathering data on changes, such as the issues that Jon mentions in his first post. It’s just a suggestion.

And that assumes that players would answer those questions seriously. Free response would open up to random BS inputted in for those who don’t care and that’s a lot of time by people to read those free response. Multiple Choice won’t cover I like most of the change except for this one aspect and there are likely too many permutations of what they like vs not like in a system for them to put every single one.

Honestly? I would answer them seriously without bias because bias makes a crappy game full of exploits.

I’m afraid to try my necro now. Her traits were fine but I’m not hearing anything great about how they play now.

Seera.5916:

nexxe.7081:

This game desperately needs a public test server. WoW and Swtor have one, and other games as well, but it doesn’t really help in some of them because of the way they are set up.. If set up properly, it can request feedback forms in-game, with specific questions and surveys, gathering data on changes, such as the issues that Jon mentions in his first post. It’s just a suggestion.

And that assumes that players would answer those questions seriously. Free response would open up to random BS inputted in for those who don’t care and that’s a lot of time by people to read those free response. Multiple Choice won’t cover I like most of the change except for this one aspect and there are likely too many permutations of what they like vs not like in a system for them to put every single one.

This is true, but if the surveys were constructed and worded carefully, it could circumvent and filter out a lot of false data. Professional pollsters and data gathering services do this all the time. It’s only a suggestion though, and the game could live without it, but it’s also not a bad idea, especially since other games do this too.

I for one am very impressed by ANet making such huge changes and being willing to shake things up. Most devs wouldn’t have the balls to change things so much and this causes stagnation (Need I remind people of the countless complaints there have been about the berserker meta being the only one viable in PvE?).

Good on you guys, ANet, for being willing to change it up. Condi is definitely erring a little on the strong side for the moment but in the case of world bosses I beg you to increase their scaling rather than introduce any significant nerfs to condi. Don’t make Condi’s glory die in days when Berserker has had years.

Also please look at each specific condition, rather than blanket nerf them all. Burning is by far and away the most ridiculously overpowered of the conditions right now and burn damage most definitely needs to be nerfed, but please for the love of whatever you hold most dear, don’t nerf condi necro super hard by just blanket nerfing all conditions, we’ve needed love for a long time, and this has finally given us some decent viability in various game modes.

The only two bad things:

*Burning is too strong.
*Quickness as a stackable boon

Please don’t nerf Necromancers… I mean, really, I was dreaming about all of this since like …forever, and now I could actually feel useful in PvE with my the one and the only favorite condi-build necro… Just don’t.

Lévis.5489:

The only two bad things:

*Burning is too strong.
*Quickness as a stackable boon

Toning Quickness down could help tame the burst a bit. I thought it was a bit too good to be true of a boon myself.

This patch has breathed a much needed breath of fresh air into the combat system for me.

I can totally understand where you’re coming from with the changes to conditions but I plead you not to take it to extremes. Bear in mind that we’re basically starting with a clean slate, it’s going to take time before things settle.

As a Necro I do however have to agree with a lot of the concerns put forward by many of the Necros on this forum:

1. Compared to many other classes our condi builds are quite underpowered. Engies have access to more conditions, included all the damaging conditions under the sun, and their ramp up time is far quicker.
2. Our heals need a look at after the CC nerf.
3. Condi builds have never really had a strong elite other than Plague, which in it’s current form is basically a suicide button.

Jon bless you for dealing with this community

Cheshire.8761:

Are you going to address how you forced characters to train into builds using their hero points without their consent? :o

I’m happy they set a default build. I use 3 toons mainly for WvW and every skill and trait I unlocked was already there. Just had to tweak it a bit but would hate if they were reset and I’d have to figure out which skills and traits to unlock again. I have all level 80s though so maybe that’s why I liked it. Didn’t spend any of my hero points.

Aerlen.5326:

Honestly? I would answer them seriously without bias because bias makes a crappy game full of exploits.

I’m afraid to try my necro now. Her traits were fine but I’m not hearing anything great about how they play now.

Signets of suffering and plaguebringer traits are freaking amazing, but besides that… Oh, blood magic rework also wasn’t a failure.

But seriously,Signet Necromancers are pretty much countering a lot of condition/boonspam builds… 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds per signet activation, affected enemies get 2 boons converted to conditions, and the recharge of signets is reduced by 20%. No ICD. And then we have a passive “plague sending” on crit if we have more than 3 conditions on us (ICD is plague signet CD, also should get reduced by signets of suffering and gain the might and boon corruption too as it casts the original signet skill.) Meaning condi engis pretty much kill themselves.

On the other hand, condi necro is bad as hell, and consume conditions and plague form were nerfed for no freaking reason.

You know what, let’s balance the damage the other way.

Keep this crazy damage output.

Just… Double the base health of everything.

EVERYTHING. Double health.

Do it.

I’m exaggerating a bit, but rather than re-nerfing condis, I think it’d make more sense to scale the health pools with the new numbers. The main problem is just that everything dies so much faster.

Such burning, much 7k ticks. Playing this cheese guardian build where all the power necros are getting kicked out of a full DS before they can cast 2 skills. It’s not even fun, and seeing as this will catch on and everyone will be playing it in a few days… RIP diversity.

But yeah, glad to see that you guys acknowledge the issues. Time to separate PVP and PVE hmm?

Just figured that I’d throw my two cents in. While I agree it’s nice to throw things in, changes such as these need some SERIOUSLY HARDCORE feedback. It seems that either A: Feedback wasn’t taken or B: Feedback was taken but ignored mostly. This update needed to be worked on and fine tuned more than it was because now, you’re rushing to make a fix and more than likely said fix will break something else.

As for my class, zerker warriors were already one of the best regarded pve classes…. I’m not entirely sure why you guys made them even better since they didn’t really need the buff but… Well THANKS! Now if you could just move banner regen back to a defensive Trait line….

I am a bit surprised that you didn’t see this coming…

That being said too, take your time fixing this fiasco. Not only do I want you to not break something else, I am seriously wanting to fire off some 7-10k burning conditions on my Guardian tomorrow. Lol

Hi Jon,

I just want to throw this video your way to let you guys know that you may need to consider some of the drawbacks with this “Slow” implementation:

It behaves as intended, but it allows for serious trivialization of the current content in situations like this.

I think this is worth looking into…

Purple Miku.7032:

Hi Jon,

I just want to throw this video your way to let you guys know that you may need to consider some of the drawbacks with this “Slow” implementation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCYXcr8zORY

It behaves as intended, but it allows for serious trivialization of the current content in situations like this.

I think this is worth looking into…

I get the point but why bring up Lupicus every time? That thing has stopped being hard in 2012…

JonPeters.5630:

Just getting these out there so we know we are all in agreement:

1) Conditions seem a bit strong
2) World bosses are currently too easy
3) There are some bugged skills and traits
4) There are some overpowered builds

We won’t fix it all at once but these are four large topics we are talking about. In the meantime keep the feedback and bug reports coming, and I guess farm up some world bosses. We are dedicating time towards these issues and are intending to resolve them as quickly as possible. As we have said before, the live environment differs too greatly from anything we can reliably simulate internally so big changes like today’s build will cause things to sometimes change at an alarming rateTM.

Thanks for your patience,

Jon

I disagree with 1), with this patch it’s now perfect

Attacks shouldn’t be the only way to deal damage, condition should be considered just like attacks, if you want spe attack, or spe condi, both should have the same output, if you spe condi, you should be weak in attacks, same if you spe attack, you should be weak in condi damage

Do not normalize everything or it will end up in a boring gameplay, where you can’t see difference between specializations and everyone will use again the same set of gear, and spe the same attribute

Condi builds are now competitive with full zerker builds. I wouldn’t call that too strong unless you also think zerker builds are too strong.

Consider that previously if you actually had an instance full of zerkers, world bosses would go down just as fast. They were balanced around the assumption that most players in the instance wouldn’t be doing a lot of damage. Now that the condi cap was removed, disorganized groups of players end up doing decent damage so you just have to adjust the bosses.

I’ll be really disappointed if you nerf conditions right when there was some hope for build diversity. Zerker meta has been overpowered for years. Please look at this with some perspective.

It is simple math, everything at the moment is dying at least 5 times faster than before. Raw damage and condition damage are not equal, the late being way too powerful right now… and they did not buff raw damage, just conditions. So they either have to put back the 25 stacks cap or tone down the damage.

Build diversity? Cleric, Soldier, Nomad gear are still forgotten in the void lol, all the damage mitigation builds are still lacklustre

XxSmokedatganjaxX.2948:

they did not buff raw damage, just conditions.

That’s not quite true. Zerk is Zerkier as well.

Pure Zerk/assassin is a bit glassier and a bit harder hitting.

The compartitive buff isn’t near what condi got, I’ll give you that, but there was all around damage buffing to everything.

XxSmokedatganjaxX.2948:

Build diversity? Cleric, Soldier, Nomad gear are still forgotten in the void lol, all the damage mitigation builds are still lacklustre

Yeah, that is pretty much 100% true. At least in PvP, it’s kitten hard to make a bunker-build that can keep up with burning stacks on most classes.

Resistance is crazy underpowered when every source of it only lasts about 2 seconds and they’re very rare.

XxSmokedatganjaxX.2948:

It is simple math, everything at the moment is dying at least 5 times faster than before. Raw damage and condition damage are not equal, the late being way too powerful right now… and they did not buff raw damage, just conditions. So they either have to put back the 25 stacks cap or tone down the damage.

Build diversity? Cleric, Soldier, Nomad gear are still forgotten in the void lol

Yea you do now that the base stats that was added only affected power users right since condi users dont start with 1k base condi damage ( compared to direct damage that get base 1k power and precision)

XxSmokedatganjaxX.2948:

It is simple math, everything at the moment is dying at least 5 times faster than before. Raw damage and condition damage are not equal, the late being way too powerful right now… and they did not buff raw damage, just conditions. So they either have to put back the 25 stacks cap or tone down the damage.

Build diversity? Cleric, Soldier, Nomad gear are still forgotten in the void lol, all the damage mitigation builds are still lacklustre

I doubt that a condi group can burst down dungeon encounters like a zerker group. As strong as conditions are, they are DoTs. Zerker groups burst stuff so they’re inherently stronger for much of the content.

Great to see a known issues thread especially with follow up explanations. Exactly the sort of communication we have long asked for

I am surprised you didnt expect world bosses to be trivialised, but good to see you are on top of the issue

Can’t tone down the dmg. It’s simple math.

If base condition dmg before was 100 dmg…

100 × 25 = 2500 dmg.

Even if you did a 75% nerf… Condition dmg at 25, with a cap of 1500, let’s say we hit 500.

25 × 500 = 12,500 dmg.

That’s not even getting CLOSE to the actual limit. And that’s also assuming a 75% nerf is done to conditions… In order to get back to normal, you’d need a 98% nerf in conditions.

2 × 1500 = 3000 dmg.

Not gonna happen, you may as well wipe conditions out the game.

Wallach.7291:

xitsLuisx.2480:

so what you mean is, necro nerf again? because why not…

In this case it’s mostly other classes. Necro just has even more powerful transfers now. So there are classes that are basically killing themselves with their overpowered condition setups because they can’t defend against it themselves. For the most part it is Burning, which Necro can hardly leverage – but they can certainly help, say, Engineers cover themselves in their own ridiculous burst stacks of it.

Can confirm. Did some WvW roaming on my engie and basically killed myself off “new necro” few times.
I just hope they won’t nerf necro AGAIN because of that, in some inexplicable kneejerk reaction.

And you can’t reimplement a cap as that is the cornerstone of your entire patch. What do you do?

Give monsters condition mitigation that scales based on stacks of conditions. That MIGHT fix this.

As I also said, then put back the 25 stack cap. Lol this seriously needs some tuning.

Same logic applied to the rest of the builds, you might as well remove them already.

Can’t add a cap. The removal of the cap is the cornerstone of this entire patch, even more than the trait system.

It would be such a huge blow to the forward development of the game.

Malystryx.4172:

Can’t tone down the dmg. It’s simple math.

If base condition dmg before was 100 dmg…

100 × 25 = 2500 dmg.

Even if you did a 75% nerf… Condition dmg at 25, with a cap of 1500, let’s say we hit 500.

25 × 500 = 12,500 dmg.

That’s not even getting CLOSE to the actual limit. And that’s also assuming a 75% nerf is done to conditions… In order to get back to normal, you’d need a 98% nerf in conditions.

2 × 1500 = 3000 dmg.

Not gonna happen, you may as well wipe conditions out the game.

And if a power build crits for 2k and you have 25 people all critting for 2k, that is 50k damage.

Remove damage from the game?

A suggestion to do with Hero Points and peoples’ complaints about them having been spent in ways they don’t want (especially for mid-level characters):

How about a one time use only option to refund all hero points?

So you auto-allocate builds for the reasons you stated, but you also give people the single use choice to reject that allocation. This would let people who are unhappy with what they’ve got (which, let’s be honest, in practice often replicates what they had only very imperfectly) make the decision for themselves without breaking the whole system of spending the points only once. And it lets those players who’ve been away for a long time still hop right in and play their characters from the moment they log on.

Zerk still needs to be stronger than Condi’s because it has no defense.

Right now dire = zerk and that is broke.

JonPeters.5630:

Let’s be clear, this version of condition stacking and condi builds being viable in all games modes is a large part of our goal. We just want to make sure we don’t create imbalances that actually make the game less fun. Don’t expect huge balance swings, but rather our balance goal has always been to make more small adjustments.

Give all classes more vitality. That seems to be the obvious solution to balancing PvP and PvE.

Khristophoros.7194:

Malystryx.4172:

Can’t tone down the dmg. It’s simple math.

If base condition dmg before was 100 dmg…

100 × 25 = 2500 dmg.

Even if you did a 75% nerf… Condition dmg at 25, with a cap of 1500, let’s say we hit 500.

25 × 500 = 12,500 dmg.

That’s not even getting CLOSE to the actual limit. And that’s also assuming a 75% nerf is done to conditions… In order to get back to normal, you’d need a 98% nerf in conditions.

2 × 1500 = 3000 dmg.

Not gonna happen, you may as well wipe conditions out the game.

And if a power build crits for 2k and you have 25 people all critting for 2k, that is 50k damage.

Remove damage from the game?

While it’s late and I’m running on fumes, is direct damage not mitigated by toughness? Conditions have no such mitigation to my knowledge and , while I may be misremembering that difference, that is what’s breaking combat right now.

Add mitigation for conditions and we’re back on track.

hibari.9836:

A suggestion to do with Hero Points and peoples’ complaints about them having been spent in ways they don’t want (especially for mid-level characters):

How about a one time use only option to refund all hero points?

Sounds great IMO.

lol this is like “we tried it in beta…”

Yep, Zerk builds need these 3 stats: Power, Precision, Ferocity while Condition builds only need to make use of one stat “Condition Damage” to be able to pull most of the damage and at the same time they can go with whatever other two stats, like Toughness and Vitality…

And yeah Malystryx, conditions go right through any toughness you have, there’s no way to reduce its damage aside from that new buff only some classes got.

gavyne.6847:

Lévis.5489:

The only two bad things:

*Burning is too strong.
*Quickness as a stackable boon

Toning Quickness down could help tame the burst a bit. I thought it was a bit too good to be true of a boon myself.

Quickness only increases auto attack damage by 50% if things are dying any faster that 75% then quickness probably isnt the reason

Its probably condi dmg buffs and general class buffs. As well as less weak builds existing and stat from armor effects

Double checked the wiki and yes, direct dmg is mitigated by armor, condition damage is not.

Theres your fix anet, mitigate it.

Malystryx.4172:

While it’s late and I’m running on fumes, is direct damage not mitigated by toughness? Conditions have no such mitigation to my knowledge and , while I may be misremembering that difference, that is what’s breaking combat right now.

Add mitigation for conditions and we’re back on track.

Migation for condis is condi clear and vitality.

Jana.6831:

Malystryx.4172:

While it’s late and I’m running on fumes, is direct damage not mitigated by toughness? Conditions have no such mitigation to my knowledge and , while I may be misremembering that difference, that is what’s breaking combat right now.

Add mitigation for conditions and we’re back on track.

Migation for condis is condi clear and vitality.

Mitigation for power is condi users bursting them down in 5s with what I can only loosely call “Dots.”

Thoughts on the latest patch and beyond;

Conditions are powerful, yes. I am not currently playing any condi characters, but i feel that the problem is not with the power of conditions but other professions. With this latest patch, the build diversity is lessened tremendously.

Thief’s are just playing burst or die builds, because acrobatics nerfed to the extremes. Other builds are mostly around burst or die. And with the beloved richochet gone, PP thief will be history.

Mesmers and Necro’s are the stars of this patch. They will tear down everything they can. Mesmer’s should be nerfed, they were already powerful enough.

Guardians and Rangers will either go thier archetype ( bunker guardian, zerker ranger) or try condi dmg. Their condition dealing abilities are greately buffed. ( I can deal 25+ stacks of bleed in 5 seconds easily with ranger)

Warriors were already gods of the battlefield, they will be stronger than before. You should watch out for them. With the right build, neither thief nor ranger can stand more than 6 seconds.

Elementalists are also buffed to the extremes. Everyone thinks fresh air build is useless because of the bolt to the heart loss. They are wrong, and will see that i guess in one week. It is way more dangerous than before. And DD eles, well i do not need to state the obvious.

Engineers… Actually I do not have a bloody clue about engineers. Never played, never cared. So i can not talk about them.

So before the patch we have different builds. There was a “meta” in the game but we were free to choose, free to try. Now we are stuck. No creativity, no originality for us. Instead of being similar to other games, I expected something unique from the Guild Wars team, as uniqueness was their “meta” before.

Vitality…. Looool

Take a moment and reread my numbers post.

Then realize just how MUCH Vitality you’d need to mitigate the increase in condition damage in game now.

Malystryx.4172:

Vitality…. Looool

Take a moment and reread my numbers post.

Then realize just how MUCH Vitality you’d need to mitigate the increase in condition damage in game now.

I’m not employed by anet – It’s just that my build before this patch was to migate conditions. Thus I had (and have, I’m lazy) valk armor and my SA line worked perfectly. If you add another stat things will become more complicated – or maybe they already are – maybe I am glad I don’t work for anet, but then again, I wonder why they are surprised – was pretty obvious how it would turn out on paper alone.

The Guardian’s elite “Feel my Wrath” eaither the CD is to sort or sometimes it just refreshes it self for 100%

To once again, bring math into it before I pass out.

If condition damage = 100. 25 was the cap.

Let’s do a baseline…. 50 K health. That’s a lot but kitten it.

Before, 100 × 25 =2500 dmg.

Now(and remember there isn’t reallllllly a huge nerf to damage so we’re going to use the same baseline 100 dmg.)

100 dmg x 500 stacks = 50,000 dmg.

Before, when you took 2500 dmg, you could counter. Now, there is no such counter.

To make vitality the mitigation, you would need to increase the baseline vitality by tenfold. Or fivefold really, you might live long enough to cast a condition clear.

Jana.6831:

Malystryx.4172:

Vitality…. Looool

Take a moment and reread my numbers post.

Then realize just how MUCH Vitality you’d need to mitigate the increase in condition damage in game now.

I’m not employed by anet – It’s just that my build before this patch was to migate conditions. Thus I had (and have, I’m lazy) valk armor and my SA line worked perfectly. If you add another stat things will become more complicated – or maybe they already are – maybe I am glad I don’t work for anet, but then again, I wonder why they are surprised – was pretty obvious how it would turn out on paper alone.

My banner regen build was built upon banner regen and condition clearing during pve fights. Even had sigil that cleared conditions.

Not possible to keep that viable right now, icd means you’d be dead before off cooldown.

Sad to say but it’s happening in game now.

@mallyx nobody can apply 500 stacks of conditions even on jungle wurm boss it didnt go over 120 with +40 players but it died in 10 seconds anyway

Yep because you don’t need 500 stacks.

140 stacks at baseline 100 dmg is still 14,000 dmg, five TIMES what prepatch damage was.

Base numbers used are not reflective of actual numbers and tbh condition specced players are probably doing the equivalent of 200-300 dmg.

And good night, have fun fixing the patch. Just remember, I need to have fun on my Guardian so don’t fix it too fast.